


southward as you go

by raumdeuter



Category: Champions League - Northendgirls, Men's Football RPF
Genre: Gen, Gijinka, POV Second Person, World War I, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-26 23:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumdeuter/pseuds/raumdeuter
Summary: You will never forget this feeling: the thundering in your ears, the scent of copper and grass, the fierce exultant singing of victory in your blood. Across the field the rest of the team is running to embrace Paul, their voices lost to the wind, and you look down at the woman with her hand on her cheek, at the wary respect in her eyes, and know you will spend the rest of your life trying to taste this again.FC Bayern: a history.





	southward as you go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doubtthestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/gifts).



> what better thing to do at the end of 2018 than break one of my own cardinal rules, which is Don't Mention The War

**_1900._ **

They don’t see you at first. In fact nobody sees you at first: not even yourself, which oughtn’t be possible. And it isn’t as if you spring into existence, like Athena leaping out of Zeus; it isn’t as if you’re everywhere, watching all of the men gathered from every possible angle, before you coalesce into being. You simply aren’t.

And then—you are.

“I’ve seen this happen before,” a young man is saying. His name is Josef Pollack, you think, though he hasn’t introduced himself. Without quite knowing how, you remember that he has spent time in Freiburg, and that you have—not a sister. Not a friend. Well, someone. Someone there, whom you also might know.

“Seen what happen?” says another man, staring up at you with open curiosity. “What is this?”

His name is Paul Francke, and you are taller than him; taller, in fact, than most of the men in this café. There are quite a few of them gathered around you: all young, all reasonably well-dressed, and as your gaze travels over them you realize that you know as much about their lives as you do Josef, who is still seated beside you. The realization doesn’t surprise you; in fact it feels quite natural.

“A sign,” says the man standing behind him. “We had one at Pankow, too. The Englishmen there said she was awfully good luck.”

(This man’s name is Franz John. His father is a mail clerk in Berlin. He used to play there, before he moved here, to Munich.

Play what? You don’t know. Not yet.)

“So we’re doing the right thing,” says someone else. Fritz, your mind supplies, and the man beside him is his brother Karl. Local boys, both of them, the Wamslers; their father owns a factory in town. They smile at you, hesitantly, and you find yourself smiling back.

There’s something endearingly eager about all these young men, something you can’t quite describe. Only the way they look at you makes you feel impossibly strong, like you’re some long-dead warrior queen come back to life. Like you could take on a world you haven’t even seen yet, and win.

“Well, then,” says Paul. “I won't say no to a little luck. What’s your name?”

You pause. You didn’t think you had one, but now, as you meet their gazes, you realize you do. They’ve offered you one, and it seems only natural to accept.

You open your mouth.

 

\---

 

Three weeks later you find yourself standing on a public pitch just off Schyrenstraße with a sword and a shield in your hands. There’s a fierce wind blowing today, whipping at your smock, threatening to tug your hair from its tight braid. Around you are the men from the café, dressed in light blue shirts and white trousers, and on the other side of the pitch is a woman you don’t know.

You raise your sword in a hesitant salute. After a moment, she does the same, and you both step forward.

“Steady now,” says Paul. Paul, you have learned, is both your captain and your manager. You’re still not sure what that means, except that when he runs you feel—more alive, somehow, like the thrill of the hunt is in your blood.

“I can take her,” you say.

“We can take them, you mean,” says Paul. But he’s smiling at you when he says it, and you can see the eagerness you feel mirrored in his expression, in all the boys’ expressions.

 _Your_ boys, you think, and are a little surprised at the rush of proprietary fondness that comes with the thought.

When the whistle blows, you spring into action without a second thought, a whirl of steel that the other woman only barely manages to parry. Her riposte clangs off your shield, sending shockwaves through your body, but you press forward, heedless of the blows she rains down on you. Movement in the background: you catch a glimpse of Paul jogging, almost leisurely, to a corner flag bent double against the wind.

You don’t stop to watch it him take it, because what would be the point? And so you don’t see him square up to the ball, don’t see it rise, nor the wind blow, and blow, and blow—

—and the ball arcs into the net, fantastic, improbable, and you lay your opponent’s cheek open to the bone.

You will never forget this feeling: the thundering in your ears, the scent of copper and grass, the fierce exultant singing of victory in your blood. Across the field the rest of the team is running to embrace Paul, their voices lost to the wind, and you look down at the woman with her hand on her cheek, at the wary respect in her eyes, and know you will spend the rest of your life trying to taste this again.

 

 

**_1913._ **

The first time you speak to Kurt Landauer, the three of you are standing in Angelo Knorr’s office. Kurt is standing by Angelo's desk, and Angelo is packing his things, and you are arguing with Angelo, as if arguing will do any good.

“I still don’t understand why you have to leave,” you say, acutely aware of how petulant you sound, as Angelo scrubs a hand across his face.

“You will soon enough,” he says. “In any case, you know Kurt already, so it shouldn’t be too much of a shakeup.”

You do know Kurt, of course, the way you know all the boys who have played for you. But that was more than ten years ago, and he was only a second-string keeper, a little too fond of beer and pork knuckle to make it into the first team. They say he would make a picture-perfect Bavarian if only he were Catholic, but of course he isn’t.

They say a lot of things, these days. They call your boys in all their finery the _Kavaliere_ , and they call you a _Protzenklub_ , and of course they don’t mean for you to take any of it as a compliment, but you do. If there’s one thing you have always wanted to be it is unabashedly cosmopolitan.

Kurt must sense your unease, but to your great relief he makes no attempt to comfort you. Instead he takes Angelo’s hand with a tight nod, and after Angelo has left the two of you stand there in silence for a long while before he sighs and offers his hand to you as well.

You feel as much a child as you have ever been. You don’t want Kurt to be your president. You want Angelo to be your president. But Angelo is leaving, for reasons he won’t or can’t explain, and Angelo trusts him, so you suppose you will have to try to trust him, too.

He doesn’t quite smile when you reach out and shake his hand, but it’s a near thing.

Nine months later he is in a German trench on the Western front, along with Paul and the Wamslers and three quarters of your squad. The other quarter is out there, somewhere, in an English trench instead, and you know every inch of no man’s land between them.

 

 

**_1915._ **

You don’t expect to feel it, the first time one of them dies.

You do.

 

 

**_1919._ **

Kurt comes back to you with the stink of razor wire and artillery on his clothing and two useless medals pinned to his chest.

“I heard about Paul,” he says.

He doesn’t say _I’m sorry,_ for which you are absurdly grateful, because how could he be sorry about a stupid, senseless thing which was never his fault in the first place? But he puts his hand on your shoulder, slow, awkward, heavy, and for the first time in a long time, you let yourself mourn.

 

\---

 

That summer a team from Budapest comes to visit. The woman who accompanies them is dark-eyed and serene, clad from head to toe in blue and white robes, a league champion’s laurels at her temples. When she looks at you you feel suddenly young and awkward, a child playing with sticks and stones.

Now and then you have been outclassed before, but never like this. She wields her rapier with expert speed; she beats you effortlessly into the dust within minutes. When you haul yourself back to your feet and lunge at her she smiles faintly in approval, and then she beats you into the dust again.

After the final whistle you trudge scowling and sore into the changing room. Kurt is waiting for you with a towel and a cold beer. He looks more pleased than he ought to.

“I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” you grouse. You snatch the towel from him and drain half the beer in one long swallow. “You weren’t out there getting your ass handed to you.”

Now he does laugh, but he stops at the sour look on your face and gestures for the medic. You aren’t really hurt—you never are, in friendlies—but the injury to your pride is harder to bear, and he understands that better than nearly anyone.

“Short passes,” says Kurt, after a moment.

“What?” you say, your thoughts momentarily derailed.

“Did you see how they played today? Short passes, player to player. They kept us running all game.”

When Kurt starts asking you questions it’s always time to start paying attention. You know he wants you to prove you can keep up with him. “She was fast,” you say. “I couldn’t follow her like I could—” You pause. There’s a point he wants to make here. “Do you remember when Angelo set up that friendly with Tottenham?”

He smiles. You’ve got it, you think: now you just have to follow the path and see where it leads. “I might. Tell me about it.”

“She was good, but I could see how she was going to play the game from a mile away. I remember thinking the English never saw a ball they didn’t want to hoof. But I thought that was just how you were supposed to do things. I’ve never seen anyone fight like the Hungarians did today.”

“They call it the _combination game_ in Scotland,” says Kurt. “I think we might be able to pick up a few tricks from them.”

You think: she was resplendent, untouchable. “I’d like that,” you say.

“See?” Kurt’s smiling again. He takes your empty beer bottle, passes you another. “It isn’t a loss if you learn from it.”

 

 

**_1932._ **

There’s always a moment of quiet right before you walk out onto a pitch, a couple of seconds after the captain’s speech and before the call to line up. You never know what to do with yourself during that time, except count your own heartbeats and wait.

Dombi Kohn, your coach, breaks the silence this time. “We’ll be all right, lads,” he says. “We have a solid gameplan.”

“Yes,” says Conny Heidkamp promptly. “We just have to score one more goal than we let in.”

Even in 1932 it’s not a particularly funny joke, but everyone’s tense and in any case Conny is your captain, so there’s a hesitant ripple of amusement, and—it helps, a little, as everyone tidies up their things and arrange themselves into something resembling a line. Young Ossi Rohr, barely twenty, glances nervously at you: you smile at him, brush an imaginary piece of lint from his shoulder, and he settles.

Josef Bergmaier pauses respectfully beside you, passes you your sword and shield. The other clubs talk about that behind your back, in the same tone their fans use to talk about your team: you can’t be bothered to maintain your own weapons, you’re so arrogant you’d rather use your players as squires. But Josef is a local boy, Munich born and raised, and he asked you if he could the year he joined. To him it’s a kind of honor.

“I took your equipment to the priest last Sunday,” he says. “He said he was a Wacker Munich fan, and not to be blasphemous. But then he said _to hell with those bastards from Frankfurt, anyway, who do they think they are,_ and he was holding your sword at the time, so I think that counts.”

As Josef gets back in line Franz Krumm nudges him in the side and says something, too low for you to hear, and gets a laughing shove in the back for it. Both of them settle at Conny’s unimpressed stare, but you can still feel the energy radiating off of them. They’ve been denied a fair game in a final against Frankfurt already. It’s high time they settled the score.

As you come out of the tunnel, you can see Nürnberg prowling at the other end of her pitch, hard-eyed, territorial. You’ve never had a pitch of your own before, much less had anyone else play a final on it, and so can’t empathize. You wish she would go away. You’re nervous enough as it is.

(You’re not on good terms with Nürnberg, but then hardly anyone is. Everyone calls her _the Club_ , and _Rekordmeister_ , as if there isn’t anyone else in the world worth mentioning. It isn’t that she doesn’t deserve it, because she does: it’s just that some deep-hidden part of you, which you don’t like to admit exists, wishes it were you instead.)

“Remember,” says Dombi in your ear, as he and Kurt head for the bench. “Eintracht’s itching for a rematch, same as you. That means she’ll make mistakes. Remember what we practiced in training. Clear thinking under pressure, that’s the ticket.”

He’s right, of course. Last time you fought even the neutrals had invaded the pitch, hoisted your boys onto their shoulders, and paraded them defiantly around the stadium, and you think someone might have hit the referee over the head with a chair. You glance up at the figure waiting for you up ahead, the eagle on her wrist ruffling its wings, dancing lightly from foot to foot. She’s defensive, on edge. But she’s also made it abundantly clear there’s no one she’d rather face in the final but you.

You raise your sword in a salute. After a moment, Eintracht Frankfurt returns it. You won’t know why it matters, yet: but for one brief instant in time the two of you, with your Jewish coaches and her Jewish sponsors, are the only teams in Germany that matter.

It’s a hard-fought match from the start, but your boys are hungry. Conny and Sigi Haringer stand together like a wall in front of your goal, fending off wave after wave, the crowd at their backs baying for justice. Josef is running like you’ve never seen him before, and his speed is your speed, is his speed again, and you can see the desperation in Frankfurt’s eyes reflected in her players as Ossi delivers a cross as picture-perfect-sweet as anything you’ve ever felt, as Josef surges forward and curls the shot past Frankfurt’s keeper, who’s come too far off his line—

Even from this distance you can hear the sound the ball makes as it ricochets off a Frankfurt defender’s fists.

The noise from the crowd is indescribable. Above it you can hear Sigi roaring, “Try and deny us a pen today, you bastards!” But there’s no need for that; the ref is already pointing to the spot. Sigi’s your usual penalty taker, and a damn good one he is at that, which is why when you and Eintracht break away you nearly drop your sword when you see him give the ball to Ossi.

You sense rather than see Kurt jump to his feet. You mouth something—you’re not sure what, after—at Dombi, sitting in his usual place behind your goal. In a final? Is he mad?

Dombi only smiles unconcernedly back. And then you notice, out of the corner of your eye: Ossi is looking at you.

You turn. You smile at him, with a confidence you don’t entirely feel. But Ossi smiles back. Then he straightens, turns, stops—and puts the ball in the back of the net.

It’s fifteen minutes to halftime. The game’s barely begun. Eintracht has nearly an hour to equalize. But you’ve caught the scent of it now, and as she reels back under your blade both of you know there is only one way this is going to end.

In the hard years to come you will remember all of them, these bright-eyed boys who won you your first championship. Josef running again now, a demon along the wing. Josef chipping the ball to Franz, easy as anything; they’d be laughing if only they had the breath to. Franz with a cheeky feint, wrongfooting a stumbling defender. As he cuts inside he spares a glance at the goal, just a quick look up and down, before he rockets the ball past the Eintracht keeper and into the top corner.

Eintracht is on her knees by then, bleeding from a dozen different places, the tip of your sword at her throat. As you catch her eye she nods, once, almost imperceptibly, and lets her own sword fall.

You’re running before her sword has even hit the ground. So is what seems like half the crowd, pouring onto the pitch, but you push past them all, up the stands and to the box. Kurt sees you coming, his mouth half-open, but you don’t let him get a word out: you pick him up bodily and spin him around until you can’t see for the tears in your eyes.

 

\---

 

One day, one day, all this will become second nature to you. But you don’t know that yet. Right now there is only the cold weight of silver in your hands, Victoria in all her winged glory smiling up at you, and the boys, _your_ boys, with their fists raised over Marienplatz, shouting _Deutscher Meister_ until their voices give out.

 

\---

 

After everyone’s hangovers have mostly faded, Kurt calls you into his office.

“Got something for you,” he says, in the gruff tone he uses when he’s a little embarrassed about something.

“Kurt,” you say, cautiously. There’s a large crate by his desk, half levered open, and inside you think you can see the dull glint of metal. “What is this?”

“I know a blacksmith who owes me a few favors,” says Kurt. His expression is impassive, but by now you know him well enough to detect what few tells he has. He’s nervous. He’s not sure if you’ll like it.

Slowly, you lift the lid. Inside is an old-fashioned cuirass, such as you’ve seen on display in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. It is simply made but well-crafted in its simplicity, and as you lift it out of the crate the white steel warms to your touch. Beneath it you can see the rest of a full set of armor, made in the same style.

It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and you were holding the Victoria in your hands not two weeks ago.

In silence you don the cuirass, the pauldrons, the greaves. Kurt moves instinctively to help you with the buckles. You think: you really will need a squire, now.

You straighten. The fit of the armor is perfect. You can feel the press of it along your shoulders, but the weight hardly bothers you at all, and when you move your arms they swing easily, unrestricted.

“Thought you should have something befitting a champion,” says Kurt, in the same gruff tone.

“I—” you say, and stop. Your heart is too full for words.

“There,” says Kurt. He squeezes your hand. “You look a proper warrior now.”

 

 

**_1934._ **

Kurt resigns a year after the final.

“Siggi will be taking over for me,” he says, “at least in name. Looks better for you if someone like him is our face.”

You like Siegfried Herrmann; you have known him and his brusque manner as long as you have known Kurt, and as a Munich policeman he is no friend of the Nazis. But all the same you are reminded, inevitably, of Angelo. You think you understand better, now, but all that means is that you are angry instead of bewildered.

“You shouldn’t have to,” you say. “I’ll think of something—I’ll talk to someone—”

“I do,” says Kurt, with brisk finality. “I’d much rather decide who my successor is than stay too long and have it taken out of my hands.”

You look down. There is too much you want to say: too much you’re not sure you’re allowed to say. Dombi left for Switzerland several months ago, leaving Conny as player-manager, and just the other day Otto Beer, who heads up your youth academy, stopped you to tell you he was resigning and moving back to Lithuania. “Just until all this blows over,” he’d said, but he hadn’t looked like he’d believed it, either.

And now Kurt is leaving you. Kurt, who has given you more than you can ever properly thank him for.

“I’ll miss you,” you say, at last, and he pats you on the shoulder.

“Don’t fret too much,” he says. “I’ll be around. They won’t get rid of me that easily.”

 

\---

 

Truth be told, you’ve never really considered 1860 much of an opponent. In the early years of the century there were a dozen different football clubs in Munich, all jostling for space. The first time the two of you met you sent her packing 3-0, and that was that.

It hasn’t been that simple for a long time, but when you face her today there’s a hatred in the stands that hasn’t been there before. At every foul and rough tackle the Grünwald shifts restlessly, on edge, waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to start something. Every time you clash the crowd holds its collective breath.

“You’re looking well,” says 1860 conversationally, as she drives you back. “Heard you had a spot of trouble with your leadership, is that right?”

“Must be nice not having to worry about anything like that,” you snarl. Despite your armor, she has you on your back foot, and she doesn’t even sound out of breath. You throw up your shield in a shower of sparks and duck, swinging for her legs, but she leaps back easily.

“I see you’ve found a new striker,” she says. Her mace glances across your pauldron, sending bone-jarring vibrations down your spine. “I thought you liked Rohr. I suppose he didn’t like you.”

You grit your teeth and don’t think about that last final, all those years ago. Ossi liked you a great deal, you don’t say. But he saw how the winds were blowing, and his loyalty had always been to Dombi first and foremost. When Dombi left, so did he. You won’t hold it against him. You never will.

“Pity to hear about Herrmann, too.” Her expression is hidden, as it always is, behind her lion-headed helmet, and that only makes you angrier. “Doesn’t sound like he was terribly well-liked either. Has he decided who’s going to replace him yet? Isn’t it so very tiresome, changing presidents all the time? Who do you think you’re fooling?”

A roar from the crowd: the ref has awarded her a penalty. You don’t even look back to see which of your boys was responsible. You’ll buy him a drink later. “If you want to be a fucking _lapdog—_ ”

Her fist connects with your face, splits your lip clean open.

The hungry crowd surges forward. In seconds the pitch resembles nothing so much as a battlefield. 1860 snaps up her visor: you get a glimpse of her eyes, furious, before you’re separated by the sheer press of people. A man in a suit makes the mistake of trying to take a swing at you. You lay him out without looking and leap over his prone body, scanning the brawling fans for your team.

You hear Sigi calling your name. When you turn towards your goal you see him herding the rest of your defenders toward you. You clear a path for them with a few swings of your shield and hurry on. Conny meets you near the center line, shouts something indistinguishable above the noise.

“Get us off the pitch,” you shout back. There is the taste of iron in your mouth and blood dripping down your chin. Conny doesn’t argue; he corrals a few more of your boys, catches young Schimmy Simetsreiter by the ear, drags him bodily across the pitch, arguing all the way.

“Herr Heidkamp!” someone is shouting, as Conny shoulders his way through the crowd. “Herr Heidkamp, you need to salute the grandstand!”

“Looks like I forgot to,” says Conny, coldly, and disappears into the changing room.

Inside, the mood isn’t any less tense. You can still hear the brawl raging outside, and as your boys slump onto the benches and kick off their boots you catch yourself looking for Kurt and Dombi. Then you remember.

“Are you all right?” you demand of them, and they stare up at you, shocked.

“Are _you?_ ” ventures Hans Welker. Your hand goes to your chin and comes away bloody. Someone passes you a towel; you press it automatically to your mouth.

“I asked you a question,” you say, your voice a little muffled by the towel.

“The lads are just a little shaken up,” says Conny. “None of us were expecting our fans to invade the pitch.”

“Our fans,” you say.

Conny looks baffled. “You didn’t see?”

“I was—distracted.” You switch to a clean corner of towel. “We did that?”

“Damn right we did,” says Sigi. He looks almost proud.

“Well,” you say. You don’t know whether to feel proud or disapproving and settle for a mixture of both. “We need to talk about all of this. You know it won’t be allowed to continue.”

“Who’s going to stop us?” Schimmy this time, the baby of the squad at nineteen, grinning with the fearlessness of youth. He thinks he’s your favorite because he’s your squire. He’s not wrong. “You, Lady Bayern?”

“I know some of you got into a street fight with a couple of brownshirts last week, and none of you will tell me who,” you say. You see a couple of gazes turn studiously innocent.

“They deserved it, anyway,” mutters Sigi, “bunch of fucking—”

Conny elbows him into silence, a little too late. Typical Sigi, you think, although you can’t find it in yourself to be angry with him this time.

“Just a rumor,” says Conny, and meets your skeptical gaze unflinchingly.

“Are you telling us to stop?” presses Schimmy, unrepentant.

“I’m telling you to be _careful,_ ” you say, more severely than you really intend.

They aren’t doing anything wrong: you know that as well as anyone. And they feel the loss of Kurt and Dombi and Otto just as much as you do, if not more. But when Schimmy flies down the wing, a terrible, scintillating joy to watch, he runs like a boy who’s never known the trenches. Surely—surely it isn’t selfish—if—

 

\---

 

It’s like this. The first match you ever played on Schyrenstraße was also the last. After that came a few weeks kicking about on Theresienwiese, when the city could be bothered to let you. Then the Wamslers’ father let you borrow a bit of land in Schwabing. You have played in six different stadiums since then, none of them your own. The Grünwald is 1860’s, and she shares it with you in an uneasy truce that seems, finally, to be coming to an inevitable end.

In England they sing of playing under the lights at home, at Old Trafford and Highbury and Anfield Road. You have only this: the loyalty of a few young men who have sworn to follow you anywhere there is room enough to kick a ball and swing a sword.

They’re still watching you now: some serious, some frustrated, all certain they’ll live forever. You don’t know how to tell them no one does.

 

\---

 

Conny is the first to stand. He takes the bloodied towel from you gently. Behind him, the rest of the team rise awkwardly to their feet.

“We’ll get through this together,” he says, softly, and you can almost believe him.

 

 

**_1942._ **

It is Magdalena’s idea, first and foremost, just so there’s no argument about that later. She doesn’t often speak to you—in those days everyone is a little too old-fashioned for that, with their stiff-necked notions about what footballers’ wives ought to concern themselves with, though in retrospect that still hasn’t changed much—but when she does, you listen, and after she has laid the whole plan out before you you shake your head.

“No,” you say.

Immediately Conny opens his mouth, but Magdalena silences him with a look and turns back to you.

“It won’t take more than an hour,” she says.

“Goering will notice,” you say.

You know from hearsay that most of the clubs, 1860 included, have already given up their trophies for scrap. For you to keep your armor, after all you and yours have already done, would be yet another glaring omission. You don’t know how many more of those you can afford.

For all your warnings, you never really expected your boys to pay you any mind. Sigi escaped prison by the skin of his teeth after running his mouth one too many times, and everyone knows Schimmy was just a little too busy tying his bootlaces to be bothered to salute the Chancellor in Berlin.

But they're still here. They’re the lucky ones.

“I shall say we’ve mislaid it in all the chaos, and doesn’t Herr Goering know there’s a war on,” says Conny.

“If I didn’t know better,” you say, “I’d think you were trying to kill me.”

It is the wrong thing to say and you know it. Every day you feel as if you are stretched thinner. Josef and Franz, who shone so brightly in that cup final against Frankfurt, were killed together last year in Russia: they’ve always sent more of yours to the front than 1860. Otto Beer, too, is gone, dead in a Lithuanian ghetto with the rest of his family. You haven’t heard back from Dombi, but last you heard he was coaching Feyenoord, which has to count for something. And Kurt—

Kurt is—safe, for now. Somewhere in Switzerland, so far away it hurts. You hold on to that: it’s all you have. _It isn’t a loss if you learn from it._

Conny forces a smile anyway. There are wrinkles around his deep-set eyes. You remember when he first came to you out of the west, the fresh-faced Grenadier of the Rhine. When did he grow so old?

“If we don’t do this they will definitely kill you,” says Magdalena. “One way or another.”

“My soul isn’t in my armor, or in pieces of silverware,” you say. But the words sound hollow even to you: another tired argument, another attempt at putting off the inevitable. Another concession.

And Kurt gave you your armor. And aren’t you tired of conceding?

“No,” says Conny. “No, your soul is on the pitch and in the stands, and if we could spirit those away, we would. But we can’t, so let us do this much.” He pauses, and adds, drily, “And in any case, I helped give you one of those trophies myself, so I ought to be able to take it back.”

They don’t tell you where they hide all of it, and you don’t ask. After the war Magdalena drives up to Grünwalder Stadion in a rickety old farm truck and unloads crate after crate at the front gate before she leans up, kisses your cheek, and drives away.

You touch your cheek, wondering. In the crates, your armor smells of straw and sunlight.

 

**_1948._ **

You saw him once during the war, in a stadium in Zurich, a long way away. The Gestapo were very clear that you were not to acknowledge his presence in any way, to look at him, or call his name. But even before they had finished warning the team you saw the looks in Conny’s and Sigi’s eyes and knew what was going to happen: knew, too, that you would have your captains’ backs.

You were too far away to see his expression then: could only see the exhausted set of his shoulders, and then the sudden surprise as you and your boys approached the far stands and began, as one, to applaud. Then he had brought a hand to his face and turned away.

You had thought that would be the last time you would ever see him. You know his family—what family he has left—is in New York, in Palestine. You didn’t think he would come back.

Now you come up behind him, silently, as he stands at the gate to Grünwalder Stadion. He is quiet for a long time.

“They really bombed the place to hell,” he says at last.

“We moved to Dantestadion five years ago,” you say. “And then Schlierseestraße after that. We’re at the Hypobank now.”

He glances at you. “You’ve had a rough time of it,” he says, without rancor.

It is almost too much for you to bear. “I kept my armor,” you blurt out, not knowing what else to say. “I still—”

“I’m glad,” he says.

You look down, suddenly ashamed to meet his gaze. You have done a great deal in his name, over the past few years, but you are suddenly certain it wasn’t enough. You think: you ought to have done more.

“You came back,” you say. “Why did you come back?”

Kurt turns to you. Exile was not kind to him, but his eyes are still the same: sharp, steady, bright; and when he looks at you the years seem to fall away until he is a sixteen-year-old keeper again.

“I found there was still something to love here,” he says quietly, and passes you a folded piece of paper.

It takes you a moment to make sense of the writing. It’s a deed for a plot of land just off Karneidplatz, maybe a fifteen minute walk away from the Grünwald.

“Säbener Straße 51,” you read, and look up at him.

“The place needs work,” he says. “But I’m given to understand all of Munich does, so that’s all right then.”

“You found me a training ground,” you say, a bit stupidly.

“It’s in Giesing,” he says in mock warning. “The heart of enemy territory.”

You think: you have played in eight stadiums in forty years and none of them were your own. You want to pick him up and spin him around: you know you still could, even after all these years.

But you have your dignity and his to think of, so instead you smile a little, and say, “You know that’s where I’m happiest.”

**Author's Note:**

> *cracks knuckles* FOOTNOTES
> 
> title is from "Seven Bridges Road" by The Eagles!
> 
> Overarching historical details were largely taken from two books: _Bayern: Creating a Global Superclub_ by Uli Hesse, and _Kurt Landauer: Der Mann, der den FC Bayern erfand_ by Dirk Kämper. If you are at all a Bayern fan I highly recommend the first ~~even if it was written by a bee~~ and if you can read German I highly recommend the second!
> 
> \- Bayern's original colors were blue and white; they would eventually switch to red and white after a temporary alliance with local sports club MSC in 1906.
> 
> \- Bayern's first ever goal really was a corner kick that went straight into the net. teach me how 2 dusel
> 
> \- Dr. Angelo Knorr, Bayern's fourth president, was forced to resign on the basis that he was gay, which was illegal in Germany at the time (and unfortunately would be for quite some time after that). He was largely responsible for beginning the professionalization of Bayern that his successor, Kurt Landauer, would continue. [X](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Knorr_\(Chemiker\))
> 
> \- over sixty Bayern members were killed in the First World War, most notably Paul Francke, Bayern's first captain and player-manager: [X](http://erfolgsfans.com/erfolgsgeschichte/25_jahre_fc_bayern_muenchen_festschrift/seite_5)
> 
> \- in 1919 Bayern got curbstomped 7-1 in a friendly against MTK Budapest. rip
> 
> \- footage of the 1932 German Championship Final between Bayern and Eintracht Frankfurt: [X](https://miasanrot.de/historisches-filmmaterial-vom-meisterschaftsfinale-1932/)
> 
> \- Kurt Landauer: [X](https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-landauer-bayern-20180124-story.html)
> 
> \- in contrast to 1860, Bayern's modus operandi during the early years of the Nazi regime was to keep replacing presidents the Nazis didn't like with more presidents the Nazis didn't like. A Nazi president was forcibly installed in 1943, but Siegfried Herrmann was elected back to the post in 1947 and gave the job back to Landauer as soon as the war was over
> 
> \- Bayern captain Conny Heidkamp narrowly avoided punishment for "forgetting" to give the Nazi salute at the end of a Munich derby in 1932; his right hand man Sigi Haringer also avoided jail time for calling a Nazi rally a "kids' theatre." More about FC Bayern during WWII: [X](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/may/12/bayern-munich-anti-nazi-history)
> 
> \- Wilhelm "Schimmy" Simetsreiter also spent the 1936 Olympics making friends with Jesse Owens and used his photo with Owens as an autograph card for the rest of his life: [X](https://miasanrot.de/round-up-wilhelm-simetsreiter/) [X](https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article464462/Ein-Kicker-mit-Courage.html) [X](https://blog4bayern.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/simetsreiter-si-owens.jpg?w=363)
> 
> \- god, if anyone can find me a copy of Magdalena Heidkamp's memoirs I'll owe you my firstborn child


End file.
